Did You Change Your Password on a Happy ‘Change Your Password Day’?

June 8th, 2009 by Katerina Korolkova, PR Director

Password management has got government support and the status of the national initiative in Australia. The National E-security Awareness Week is held from 5-12 June this year. A series of events and workshops take place across Australia to raise awareness of e-security risks.

In the interview to ABC radio, Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy urged to use stronger passwords and update them regularly. He recommended passwords that are 8 or more characters long, including lower- and upper-case characters, one digit and one special symbol. Passwords should be updated at least twice a year.

We welcome the Australian initiative to raise awareness of secure passwords. In the recent years we at ElcomSoft have been trying to draw attention to the fact that both individuals and businesses have to rethink passwords they use. Password recovery techniques have developed much thanks to growing potential of parallel computations and supporting architectures, cheaper graphic adaptors’ prices and constant cryptographic research.

We recommend changing your password every 3 months. Do not forget that for applications with 40-bit encryption (e.g.MS Office 97/2000) 8-character passwords are not enough. Never use any personal data or dictionary words for your password. Read our white papers to learn more about password strength.

“Change Your Password Day” was a part of a comprehensive security initiative launched by the Australian government. Multiple workshops were held all across the country to make people aware of the fact that strong passwords changed regularly could prevent data thefts. It is just a good example of how the authorities can draw the attention of the nation to the weak-password problem.